Finley and Me                                              

By Lola Luo     

When I first heard the name, I was twenty years of age. I had just graduated from nursing school and had been assigned to the OR at SRRSH. The Senior Doctor there showed me a tool and said, “This is a Finley retractor. It is very useful. We just have two of them now, so they get a lot of use.”

When I first saw him, I had been working about one year in the OR where I was a scrub nurse. At this surgery the patient’s condition was very serious. The surgeon asked Professor Finley to come in for a consult, and about ten minutes later he arrived. With the surgical mask on, it was hard to judge Finley’s age, but he seemed to be around seventy years old. He spoke softly and slowly, so it was hard for me to catch what he said. With doctor Finley’s advice, however, the surgery was successfully completed.

When I first talked to him it was Spring Festival 1999. One of my colleagues, Anna, invited me to go visit doctor Finley in his apartment on the hospital grounds. He looked gentle and not intimidating to get close to. On his table there were several books written in Chinese and a Chinese – English dictionary. The conversations around me gave me a lot of confidence to talk with him as a foreigner. I could also see that even at his age he had not stopped learning a language, so how could I have an excuse to stop learning English?

After that initial time, Anna and I frequently visited doctor Finley at his apartment in our hospital. We saw that he often rode his bicycle to the local produce market where he practiced Chinese by bargaining with the sellers. He enjoyed it so much as it felt like fun. He also liked to take his bicycle to go around West Lake whether he felt blue or happy. Back in his home state of Ohio, he had a big farm, so he liked to plant vegetables in a small garden near the hospital. He worked so hard every day. In addition, he liked to walk around the wards and consult with the surgeons. He had a natural love of his job as his father and grandfather were also doctors. He always encouraged our young doctors and taught them things about medical care. He gave them a lot from his experience.

The other thing Dr. Finley showed is that he is so kind, too, and believed in helping others. For example, he sponsored five nurses from our hospital to go to the US and UK for advanced studies. The nurses now are all successful and some of them became a doctor or a teacher of nurses in the UK and US.

Each year from 1994 to 2006, Dr. Finley appeared at SRRSH in the fall and went back to the US in the spring of every year. Who can imagine the things this senior endured flying 24 hours alone from Dayton, Ohio to Hangzhou! What made him do that? It was because of his kindness and love. He contributed his passion and love to help build a bridge of friendship between China and the USA.